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Hive Scale

16 February 2016

The hive scale is a digital scale that can be left under a bee hive that will transmit data about the weight of the hive over time. When my wife, Dani, picked up the hobby of beekeeping I found that the bee hive scales for sale were in the $800 range. I would probably buy one if it were under $200, but after searching high and low nothing came close. Finally, one day while hanging out at Hackerspace Charlotte, I decided I would try to make it myself. Some of the other hackerspace members and I even set the bold target of getting the bill of materials down under $35. I'm still in the process of putting it together.
I've been playing with the following scale since it is cheap, and small enough to play with until I get the rest of the components right.
I was able to take the four wires coming from the load cell and remove the board that came with the scale(since I don't know how it works) to use with my own set up.
I'm using the HX711 chip which has some documentation on how to use it, am able to plug in the 4 wires from the load cell, and get readings just fine.
More to come soon!